It’s been a great year in content marketing, so we had plenty of trouble narrowing down all we’ve seen into the ten best. Yet that’s exactly what we’ve done, so without further ado: our best content marketing of 2016, part 1:
Why buy an article when you can buy a whole site? At least, we assume that’s what someone at Chase Sapphire Reserve asked during a meeting before they settled on paying Vox to build them an entire travel site. Launched in October, Meridian takes its readers on a trip to a new destination every week. But lots of companies create site for content marketing purposes, so what makes this one special? Well, the main thing is that Chase contracted Vox to build their site, and Vox has the data and analytics tools, publishing software, and a network of readers through its other publishing efforts to make something great.
Boy do we hate most Olympic marketing. Overly sentimental, chest-thumping nationalism. Maybe that’s why we love the School of Rio series that Samsung did in July. It’s a whole series of comedic shorts featuring UK comedian Jack Whitehall learning about sports from Olympians. The rationale had to do with equating Olympic endurance with the battery life of Samsung’s phones . . . which works on the marketing level. Now if only those batteries didn’t explode.
Nick Offerman is associated with Lagavulin whisky entirely thanks to his Parks and Recreation character Ron Swanson, so it was just a matter of time before Lagavulin just decided to pay the man to promote their whisky. Last winter, they got him to sit by the fire for 45 minutes straight, just drinking whisky. In June, he celebrated Father’s day by sitting in a canoe with his dad, not talking.
Pornhub does good content marketing. And their “Pornhub Health Initiative” from August is a case in point. Basically, thanks to the fact coverage of the Rio Olympics was rife with concerns about Zika and other doom ‘n’ gloom scinarios, Pornhub was able to argue that the best way to keep safe was stay home and look at porn. Well, they way they put it is funnier.
How else should Netflix promote their dark hit show House of Cards than with a portrait of scheming evil president Frank Underwood in the National Portrait Gallery? Simultaneously highbrow and creative, this was pretty damn cool.
Check back next week for our top 5 content marketing picks.